Value Rationality in Collective Edgework Experiences: The Making of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy 1994–2008

Abstract

Guns N′ Roses' Chinese Democracy was one of the most expensive albums ever made and took over a decade to create. The people who completed the Chinese Democracy project were almost entirely different from the people who started it. The album and the people who created it were viewed as strange and unusual by many audiences—as deviant—basically. This article argues that the making of Chinese Democracy can be viewed as a form of collective creative edgework. Edgework is a concept from the sociology of risk that describes how skilled individuals manage risk in high stakes contexts and, by successfully doing so, produce feelings of transcendence in themselves. The making of Chinese Democracy appears to meet the criteria for edgework. The album's creation emerged from a death context; it featured highly skilled people attempting to navigate a situation of high risk, and it generated feelings of psychological euphoria in the people who were involved with it. However, the article argues that the Chinese Democracy project oscillated the edge, sometimes crossing over into chaos. One reason for this, the article argues, is that the project's edgework became destablilized at times by the presence of what Weber calls value rationality.